As noted earlier, the 13th district U.S. House race in Florida was extremely close. Only 300 votes separate the Democrat and the Republican candidates; no other candidates ran. In Sarasota County, Florida, 13% of the people who voted, failed to vote for U.S. House. This picture of the electronic screen ballots shows why. Note pages one and two. In the other three counties in the 13th district, more than 97% of the voters who came to the polls voted for U.S. House. The other three counties did not have this bad design. Also, among the Sarasota County absentee voters who voted by mail (and thus were not subject to this bad design) more than 98% voted for U.S. House.
Since Sarasota County voters who did vote for U.S. House were disproportinately more supportive of the Democratic candidate than the other counties in the district, it is very likely that this poor design cost the Democrats a seat.
Not sure I see the problem. The office is listed right there with a heading. If a voter is unwilling to read – or isn’t sure just what the office is, then they should, perhaps, not be voting for that particular office.
I agree with Der Fuehrer (sorry).
No problem is apparent, or at least not obvious, on the PDF display.
I believe that, again, the major problem is with the voters.
Maybe Florida just needs someone to appoint candidates, instead of confusing the poor Floridians with ballots.
What was the undervote percentage in Sarasota county for the Hospital Board race? It occupied a similar position on its page (above the page header). If it was also unusually high, then it would seem reasonable to think that the ballot design is to blame.
I’m sick and tired of these stores about Democrats in Florida not knowing how to fill out a ballot. How hard can it be for pete’s sake? In 2000, with the Butterfly Ballot, if they had looked carefully, they would have seen the Democratic arrow was closer to the Al Gore hole than the Pat Buchana hole and if they would just have been more careful again with these machines they would not have had this problem either. And with Florida’s recent history, you would have thought people would be more careful, but apparently, not Democrats in Florida.
Sorry, Chris, but here’s another such story:
One absentee voter mailed his ballot in, using collector’s item stamps.
One of the stamps was worth, unused, several tens of thousands of dollars.
Now it’s worth, maybe, several hundreds — but perhaps cannot ever be rescued from the ballot box.
Florida law prevents opening the box into which the ballots are sealed.
The particular stamp in question is the “upside-down Jenny,” an airmail stamp of about 80 years ago.
Looks like the Democrats have been smoking too much weed. I see no problem with the ballot but then again I do have an IQ over 70.